Tonight could've been better for KEL. Having a terrifying nightmare was bad enough, but waking up to BASIL's house being broken into and having the PHOTO ALBUM stolen was definitely the cruddy cherry on top of the crappy sundae. MARI and POLLY called the authorities, but SUNNY and BASIL decided to run outside and find the thief themselves. Maybe it wasn't the best course of action to chase after a robber at the dead of night, but they were too determined to get it back to just do nothing.

Heck, KEL took some initiative for the first time in forever, declaring he'd check the old hangout spot for the thief by himself. By the time he got there though, that enthusiasm drained quickly when he realized what he was doing. He knew who took the ALBUM, and he knew where she went. Maybe he just wanted to make sure no one else found her. By the time KEL got to the hangout's opening, he saw her back, clad in a white jacket and covered by pink hair.

"AUBREY." KEL's voice was quiet and serious. The girl in front of him barely moved, still sitting in a spot of moonlight with her head down. "AUBREY, I know you can hear me." Still, she didn't turn. If anything, she just tucked into herself even more. "AUBREY, you need t-" "Shut it, KEL." AUBREY's head finally looked up.

"Why are you here? Shouldn't you go back to your friends?" KEL couldn't see her face, but her voice was cracking, like she was crying. There was sadness with a hint of venom in her voice. "Or do you just enjoy kicking me while I'm already down?"

"AUBREY, I need the ALBUM back. It belongs to BASIL." Again, KEL's tone was more dour and solemn than he expected it to be. AUBREY raised her head to his words, now he was sure that he was reaching her. "You can't keep doing this to him. You two were best friends, it was bad enough when you lied about him to your friends, but now you're breaking into his house and stealing from him?"

AUBREY began to stand up, revealing two things on the ground. BASIL's PHOTO ALBUM, opened halfway. And her SPIKED BAT. A small twinge of fear crawled up KEL's spine when he saw the bat. He never saw her use it, but it never brought a good feeling in him when he saw it, especially with how…emotional AUBREY has gotten recently. "Why do you care? You're moving away tomorrow, you'll never see me or any of us ever again." AUBREY still had her back to KEL, but the venom in voice was getting greater by the second. "Don't act like some righteous idiot now. You didn't care about us before, and you don't care about us now! You stopped caring ever since HER-"

"STOP IT!" KEL raised his voice, for the first time in years. AUBREY flinched, even KEL grimaced at how loud he was. That was bound to alert the others, if not, most of the neighborhood to their skirmish. "Don't…bring up his name. Just don't." AUBREY's body slacked, he could hear her whimpering. She stared down at the ground, any fight she had in her immediately dissipated when he yelled. "I care about SUNNY, I care about BASIL, I care about MARI, and I care about you. I don't want to leave anyone, but I don't have a choice." AUBREY finally turned to KEL, and her face was…a sad, teary mess, to say the least. She looked mad as all hell, but she still seemed melancholic. The moonlight reflected off of her blue eyes, almost making them glow in the dark. For a reason he couldn't understand, that made KEL all the more on edge.

"So what? That justifies you ignoring me all this time? Treating me like a bully? Not exactly caring behavior towards a friend, was it?" Shoot, that was a big slip up on his KEL's part. AUBREY was his friend, right? She had to be…right?

He looked off to the side. "I…don't know how to feel about you. We were friends, but I never felt like you liked me in retrospect. We fought a lot, never agreed on anything, heck, you insulted pretty much everything about me, right on down to my beverage of choice. If anything, it felt like you only tolerated me because we happened to have the same friends. I wouldn't have been surprised if we drifted apart after a couple of years, even if what happened didn't happen, y'know?"

Or at least, that's how KEL rationalized it in his head. Sure, he had fun messing around with AUBREY when they were kids, but she had to get bored of him at some point, right? They only really argued and teased each other, they went about as well together as water and oil, they were bound to split up eventually. Surely she felt the way. But then…why was it when KEL turned back to AUBREY, she looked upset, betrayed almost?

"...The fuck are you talking about? We were great friends, along with everyone else. We fought, but that was just how we got along! Even if we played rough and insulted each other, we still cared for each other! How could you forget that?!" AUBREY was sobbing and yelling. KEL stepped back out of surprise. "We were supposed to be best friends. Stick together through thick and thin. But you just ignored me, acted like I never existed for four years. N-now you're leaving me behind, just like everyone else did."

KEL slowly approached AUBREY, arms raised. He forced an uneasy smile on his face. "What? No, AUBREY, our friends aren't leaving you, they-"

"Don't give me that crap!" AUBREY quickly closed the distance between them, pointing accusingly at the boy. "BASIL hates me for taking the ALBUM and having my friends bully him for something he didn't do. SUNNY will never forgive me for what I did to BASIL. And MARI…she won't know what to do with me. My DAD left to who knows where, and my MOM might as well be dead! All I have left is you…and you'll be gone. I...I didn't want it to end like this. I don't want to be alone." AUBREY grabbed KEL's hand and grasped it for dear life. He felt alarmed and tense, but that faded away when he saw AUBREY's teary, dejected face. She begged. "Please don't leave me. Please."

KEL could tell he wasn't handling this right, he was never good at handling this type of stuff right. "I…yeah, I get it. I messed up horribly. Maybe I shouldn't have shunned you out. I couldn't deal with anything correctly." AUBREY glanced at him with a MISERABLE expression on her face. "I just…everything spiraled out of control so fast that I barely knew what was going on at the time. And by the time I found out…" KEL looked at AUBREY with a wistful frown. "We had the funeral. My parents divorced. Everyone fell apart." AUBREY frowned. That was an unpleasant time for her, for both of them. They both sat down on the grass.

"The younger me would've said that everyone would just forgive you if you apologized because we're all friends, but you messed up a lot. We both did. It's hard to imagine things just going back to the way things were after everything." AUBREY nodded her head. A part of her wanted to go back, but she burned too many bridges. It just wasn't feasible anymore.

"I just want to know. Why did you do it?" AUBREY's eyes opened wide, like a deer in headlight, shocked by KEL's sudden question. "Why did you lie for me? You saw what happened, you saw me push him. Why did you tell everyone that HERO…did that to himself?"

"I panicked. I didn't know what to do or say." To a young, innocent AUBREY from a few years past, what happened between the two brothers hit too close to home. She wanted to relax at the HIDEOUT to escape from the arguments, but that day just wasn't AUBREY's day. It followed her to the place she thought was safe. Yelling, insults, shoving, terrible things that the girl was all too used to trailed her, tormented her.. So, she tuned it all out, hiding away in a bush, clenching her eyes shut, and covering her ears until it stopped. Eventually, it did stop. With a crack and a splash.

AUBREY speaks in a gentle, yet anxious tone. "You were…are one of my best friends. I wouldn't know what I've done if I lost you that day too. I was so tired of losing people I cared about, I wanted to do something to keep that, even if it meant…lying." AUBREY grasped KEL's hands even harder. "Even if you pushed him, I didn't want to think you were a bad person. I didn't want everyone to think you were a bad person. You…you were just upset, it was an accident. You didn't deserve to get in trouble."

"But I did." KEL's eyes started to water, he looked down, breaking eye contact with AUBREY after what felt like forever. "We argued, but I pushed things too far, I couldn't let things go and kept a stupid grudge I doubt I would've kept had we actually talked things out. And when things went south…I ran. I hid away in my room after everything, hoping that whatever happened was just a dream or that I'd just snatched away to face what I did. But nothing happened."

KEL stayed in his room for what felt like hours that horrible day. He endured the increasingly hard knocks on the door, yelling from the other side, sirens from the outside, and the sinking feeling he felt on the inside. He thought it would all come to a climax at some point, everything culminating in the door breaking down and him losing everything and everyone he cared about all at once. But that didn't happen.

Instead, it happened very slowly. When KEL came out of his room the next day, everything felt so muted and solemn, like the color and liveliness of his home was sapped out of it. His MOM became cold and distant, it seemed like she could never stay in the same room as him, always finding an excuse to leave his sight. His DAD still seemed to care, but he looked more tired and saddened with each passing day, almost as if he was expecting something from KEL, something he became more aware would never come as the days rolled by. Eventually, he stopped seeing his MOM around anymore, and he got the TALK from his DAD about them "separating". The FAMILY that KEL loved was gone. All because he couldn't stand being second best to his big brother.

"Y'know, I always wondered why I never got in trouble for what happened. I was expecting something to happen any day then, I'd get pulled away by the police, or maybe I'd be berated by you guys and lose my friends. But…no one said anything, nothing happened to me. I was too scared to mention it myself, so I stayed quiet. It took me a while to realize what happened, right at the funeral." KEL looked back at AUBREY, shame and regret were abundantly clear on her face, contorting it into a grimace.

"You told everyone that HERO submerged himself on purpose. That he ended his own life. I'd get it if you panicked and didn't want me to get in trouble, but…why would you do something like that for me?" When his DAD gave his eulogy on HERO, that's when KEL put it all together. The speech about how HERO always put others above himself made the pit in his stomach grow tenfold that day. No one knew what he did, everyone thought wonderful, happy-go-lucky HERO committed suicide, leaving his loved ones and dreams.

"I don't know. I really don't know." Except for AUBREY.

He didn't even know the girl was there when it happened, KEL thought he was alone with HERO. "Imagine my shock when you started going out of your way to be my friend after that. AUBREY, the girl that called me a gross color, wanting to hang out with me alone." When the friend group fell apart, AUBREY was the only one who still went out of her way to see him, everyone else was still grieving. She knocked on his door everyday, sat with him at the park, talked about dying her hair pink, played games like PET ROCKS with him, and so on. Hell, she even tried to indulge in ORANGE JOE to make him feel better.

But it never turned KEL back to his cheery, loud self. It was nice to have someone around after the divorce, but everything that AUBREY did felt…uncomfortable. Awkward. Apprehensive. The reserved, clingy girl that followed him then wasn't the same strong, extroverted AUBREY that he was frenemies with. Ultimately, it rubbed the boy the wrong way.

"I cared about you, that's why. I…I still do. Maybe it was guilt or something, but I didn't want to leave you alone, I wanted to be there for you. And…" AUBREY rubbed the back of her head while looking down at the ground. "As selfish as it was, I wanted you to be there for me. Being alone back then was terrifying." The divorce, nightmares, and guilt that weighed on little AUBREY's heart back then made it almost impossible for her to be by her lonesome, it hurt too much. Even now, the idea of being alone terrifies her "A small part of me was hoping everything would blow over and everyone would be back together."

"Instead, I think I ended up hurting you even more than I already did." AUBREY stared back at KEL, giving him an empathetic look. "I don't think I'll ever forget the look you gave me when I told you what I did. The guilt got to me one day and I wanted someone to confide in, and I chose you. I was expecting you to get mad and yell at me, but you just sat and stared. You looked so…shocked and disturbed. It felt so eerie to see you like that. You ran away, and after that, you wanted nothing to do with me. You never opened the door for me and avoided me whenever I saw you outside." The girl gives off a sardonic chuckle. "I guess I should've seen that coming. Yet, that didn't stop me from getting pissed off about everything going horribly wrong."

"Yeah, I remember you knocking on my door a lot for days after that. Very hard. After my dad heard you say some…choice words, I think he threatened to call the police on you. You stopped knocking after that."

"...Yeah, I'm seriously sorry about that. I got desperate, no one else would talk to me. Losing you felt like the end of the world."

KEL thought about something. "What about BASIL? I know SUNNY and MARI were dealing with some issues on their own, but you and BASIL were friends before we met you. What happened with him?" How did you end up bullying him for so long?

AUBREY's face contorted into a sorrowful frown again. "It was the ALBUM. BASIL let me come over to his house one day after school. He kept mentioning how much he missed everyone and how much he was glad to see me again after so long. This was after you started avoiding me." KEL had the faint feeling he wasn't going to like what came next. "I was furious at everything falling apart, but I was especially mad at you, SUNNY, BASIL, and MARI for leaving me. Even when BASIL was willing to hang out with me again, it still felt bitter, nothing he did or said felt genuine to me. We didn't talk or do much, but eventually, he had to leave to do something. And when he did, I saw something."

"The ALBUM. The photos of us having fun, the memories of the time we all spent together, the proof of the friendship that we shared was right there. And it INFURIATED me." AUBREY's voice wavered as she shook. "It felt like it was taunting me of times that would never happen again, memories that would get overshadowed because of my lie, friendships that I helped ruin because of a dumbass decision! I hated looking at it, but I couldn't stop going through it. I needed something sentimental to get by everything, but it twisted me up inside that everyone looked so happy while I was miserable. So I…"

KEL put two and two together rather quickly. "Covered the photos up with black marker, the same thing you accused BASIL of doing."

AUBREY slowly nodded her head. "Yeah. BASIL came into the room right as I marked the last photo. He was upset and confused, asking me what I was doing, and I froze. And that moment made me realize something, I fucked up again. I ruined the ALBUM, the thing that held our memories and should've been cherished, I scribbled it out because of a tantrum." Tears flowed from AUBREY's eyes, the tears and sobbing coming back full force. "I felt so ashamed of myself, I…I couldn't even look at BASIL when he tried to talk me down. No matter what optimistic crap he said about how he forgave me and he'd be there for me, I couldn't even look at him, I was so ashamed. I ran off with the ALBUM, and never looked back until I got home."

"So that's what happened. I'm guessing you accused him of doing that to the HOOLIGANS because you didn't want to admit to what you did, huh?" AUBREY nodded her head, giving confirmation. It was KEL's turn to give a chuckle, albeit, a pitiful one. "You burned a lot more bridges than I thought you did. I didn't think things would go so downhill for you after I…yeah."

"At least you made friends with the HOOLIGANS, they seem pretty devoted to you as their boss." To KEL, the group of teens may be rowdy and rough around the edges, but they seem like a group of decent characters. At least, based on the limited time he spent with them with SUNNY. "Even without us, you made some nice friends."

"Yeah, but that won't last long now. They know I lied about BASIL because of yesterday, I doubt they'd want me around anymore. They probably think I used them to get out of taking accountability. They may be gruff at times, but they're still good people. They aren't the type to go after someone innocent, and I led them to doing that." KEL looked sympathetically at AUBREY as she sighed. "I tricked my friends into being bullies. I swear, it feels like I'm cursed to hurt everyone I care about. Ever since what happened to HERO, I can never think hard enough before I say or do something horrible." AUBREY looked longingly at KEL, he felt uneasy.

"That's why I'm so scared of you leaving. You're the only one that truly knows who I am, for better or for worse. Even after everything I did to you, you're willing to listen to me. If you leave, I won't have that with anyone else, not with our old friend group, not with the HOOLIGANS, not with even my own family." AUBREY looked down, her face obscured by shadows. "But I'm gonna lose you too, and I can't do anything about it. A part of me believes this is all a punishment for me. For everything I did, that this is what I deserve after hurting everyone. But I just want to be happy again, I want everyone to be happy again." AUBREY held her head down. "But…I have to realize that can't happen, that won't happen…at least not with me around."

That brought KEL's thought process to a grinding halt. What AUBREY just said brought a familiar, sinking feeling in his gut. "What do you mean, AUBREY?"

AUBREY had a pensive, despondent look on her face as she glanced back at KEL. She began to stand up while grabbing her SPIKED BAT. "There isn't anything left for me here, KEL. No friends, no family, and I don't have much of a future, considering my record of delinquency. For fuck's sake, I commited a breaking and entering along with theft tonight. Even if, for some stupid reason, BASIL doesn't press charges, the whole town's going to know." AUBREY walked slowly towards the lake, staring at her reflection in the water. "If I felt alone and abandoned before, it's going to be ten times worse after this. I'll be known as a dangerous criminal that can't control her temper to save her life. I might as well forget about getting a job or making new friends. I really screwed up here."

"...I don't think I can stay here, not like this. I've burned enough bridges here. I have to leave. It'd be better for everyone." AUBREY turned her head towards KEL behind her. Even though tears streamed down her face, she looked calm…almost content. "This may be my last chance to say this, so I have to say it here. I'm so sorry KEL. I'm sorry for making things harder for you, I'm sorry for lying about your brother, and I'm sorry for making your last couple of days here hell. I'd say 'I hope you could forgive me someday', but I'd be asking for too much at this point." The girl pointed at the ALBUM on the ground near KEL. "You can take it back now, I…just needed to look at it one more time."

AUBREY turned around with a…sorrowful expression. "For what it's worth, I really liked being friends with you KEL. It was wonderful to be with everyone, but…I don't think I'd trade being friends with you for anything in the world. You were a better friend than I deserved. See you around." AUBREY turned back to the lake, waving her arm back to say goodbye.

This…everything about this felt so wrong to KEL. Even if AUBREY lied about everything, even if she hurt him and his friends, even if he was angry with her, he never wanted her to leave. He wanted to fix things before he left FARAWAY TOWN, and that included reconnecting with the people he left behind after HERO's death. That included reconnecting with AUBREY, even after everything she's done. But then the pessimistic side of KEL thought about something: would that be possible? She's in pain, but it's far past the point that a hug or talking things out can help. He could barely talk her through THIS, let alone talk her out of leaving. The most he could do was place a band aid on what was a festering, infected wound.

He didn't want AUBREY to leave, but was there anything he could do? What if he said something stupid and made things worse with her than they already were? He wanted to help so badly, but he couldn't. KEL wished he was as good as a listener as SUNNY, or as optimistic as BASIL, or as insightful as MARI. He wished he was half as good of a person as HERO was. KEL wished he could've been as good of a person as he wanted himself to be, but he couldn't even accomplish that.

The ALBUM was within his reach. All he had to do was take it and go back to others. Act like this never happened, go back to bed, and leave FARAWAY with his DAD. Maybe then he could finally move on from everything and start things over. Go to a new school, get a new hobby, make new friends, be the KEL that people could be proud of again. But that felt wrong to think about. He didn't want to leave FARAWAY, he didn't want to leave his friends, and most of all, he didn't want to leave AUBREY. He cared about her, he really did. What could he do? What should he do?

WHAT SHOULD KEL DO?

TELL AUBREY YOU'LL TELL EVERYONE THE TRUTH.

TAKE THE ALBUM AND LEAVE AUBREY BEHIND.